Rambus sues Nvidia

Memory standards troll strikes again

PATENTS BANDIT Rambus, the troll under the bridge of computer memory engineering standards, announced Thursday that it has filed a lawsuit against the graphics technology vendor Nvidia claiming patent infringement.

Rambus said its complaint alleges that Nvidia's products featuring SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, GDDR and GDDR3 SDRAM memory controllers infringe 17 Rambus patents. It claimed that the Nvidia products implicated include chipsets, graphics processors, media communication processors and others in at least six product lines.

The Los Altos, California based technology licencing company said it is 'seeking injunctive relief barring the infringement, contributory infringement, and inducement to infringe the Rambus patents, as well as monetary damages'.

"For more than six years, we have diligently attempted to negotiate a licensing agreement with NVIDIA, but our good faith efforts have been to no avail," Tom Lavelle, Rambus SVP and general counsel, said in a statement. " Nevertheless, we hope to continue discussions with NVIDIA to reach a negotiated settlement."

Nvidia reportedly has not commented on the Rambus complaint yet.

With this lawsuit, Rambus appears to be staking a claim against Nvidia while the graphics company still has some assets. Nvidia recently announced that it expects to take a US$150 to US$200 million charge for reportedly defective graphics chips that it supplied in significant quantities to multiple laptop PC manufacturers.

But we suspect that's going to cost more.